


A thousand temples

by wanderingsmith



Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 05:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6225943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingsmith/pseuds/wanderingsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second he saw the shadow waiting besides his truck that night, he knew the plan had, unsurprisingly, changed.<br/>"I told you we needed him alive."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A thousand temples

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd be daft enough to pay me for this. As it is thought, so let it be said; you make the toys, I play with 'em.
> 
> after that sense&sensibility street scene in E3
> 
> so yeah, bad habit of sitting on fic, waiting for it to improve, is still in full force. this is much.. dryer. more staccato than I usually write. but it doesn't want to change. so. yeah.

The first few steps were taken on automatic: mind too busy reverberating with shock and anger and half-buried anguish. The world may as well have been empty for all he saw. 

Until he tripped on a crack in the pavement and the jostle kicked his brain out of the rut. 

Over. Done. 

Never see Barney again.

'If I never had to see him again-' 

Lee stopped, head rising as his jaw clenched, old idiotic deep of dark night thoughts raking through him with wild bitterness. Fine. Fine: bastard wanted it over? Well Lee was getting his money's worth.

He turned around and saw Barney's familiar limping figure about to turn the next corner, and he took off after him. Again. Silent this time. 

Not thinking clearly enough at the time to realize that Barney not reacting to someone running up to him had to mean he was as buried in his head as Lee had been.

Only thinking at the last second, as he grabbed Barney's shoulder with one hand, that he might get a punch for the move. Didn't stop him sliding the other hand into Barney's hair and fisting it to jerk him into place. The man started to say something: the garbled sound of what might have become Lee's name was silenced when Lee mashed their lips together. The resistance that should have been there from the moment of his grab finally started to build up at that touch, but Lee didn't hesitate, brought the other hand to slide into more slick hair; pushed his tongue past lips before they thought to defend the gate.

There was no enjoyment in forcing his slick touch where his dreams had him welcomed; desired. Here in reality, there was nothing but the waiting for Barney's hands to appear and take a violent grip on him to shove him off. 

But the seconds passed, and no physical pain cut in. He was flicking the tip of his tongue at a sharper tooth than any *he* had when it occurred to him that he hadn't got bit. That the expected hands were on his shoulders: they just weren't gripping, or pushing him off. If the broken edges of their last conversations weren't still cutting him up, if he wasn't faintly aware that they stood in the middle of a street in the middle of hyper-conservative America... Lee would expect his alarm to interrupt at any moment. 

With just one last softer touch, lips feeling as bruised as his heart, now, he pulled back, greedily trying to remember every second. Inches between him and eyes that were all black pupil. Staring back at him; *almost* steadily. 

Too close to being steady.

He didn't ask. Didn't want to hear Barney say it was over again. 

He gently un-fisted and untangled his fingers as he looked away from goodbye and instead stared at bruised lips; absently, wistfully, feeling the scar-rough scalp and silky hair going past his fingers. That he'd known for a lifetime that life was unfair didn't stop a childish voice at the bottom of his mind from whining that he didn't want to let go.

But Lee swallowed the sounds and stepped back. Turned away.

He wasn't thinking clear. Not near clear enough to get through Barney's thick skull when *he* was obviously messed up as shit.

\--

Barney hoped to hell the man didn't see his face before he turned away, because he knew he wasn't hiding anything, anymore. Could hear his breath jerk as he tried to swallow the bubble of pain. 

He'd set himself to give up everything. Had even been set to deal with Lee's shouting; known the man wouldn't just let him- But that had been the end of Barney's strength. 

This... This he had no defence against. To have a taste- To know that *Lee* had wanted... That he was taking even more than he'd thought from the man. God, he'd only ever wanted to keep him *safe*! Bonaparte would find him a decent group with someone in charge who didn't lose his focus and get his people killed; Barney knew damn well Lee was more than good enough to get anywhere he wanted. 

Just let him move past the mess Barney'd made!

\----

When Christmas showed up at his door, Doc expected to be jollied into going to hassle Barney into smartening up. 

Sharing some nice beers while reminiscing about old jobs with someone who'd seemed to dislike him on sight was a bit odd. Though he had to admit, seeing the fellow's eyes hardened and focused as when they'd been on the job was better than that unpleasant hurt look he'd caught sight of when Barney dropped his little bombshell.

Wasn't until he dragged himself to coffee the next morning that he got suspicious at just how many questions had seemingly incidentally wrapped back to Stonebanks. 

\----

A limousine came to a stop in front of Warsaw's Intercontinental hotel, unloading several men in dark suits that glistened in the brightly lit night. As they started under the portico, the one leading from the center seemed to stumble.

And chaos erupted.

\----

The last time he'd been so isolated was 15 years ago. The last time he'd gone deep cover.

Barney's thigh twitched at the memory; the old break usually waited for changes in weather to snarl at him, but thinking about that agonizing crawl through the jungle with a wrecked leg, hoping like hell his pickup showed up and waited the alloted time, was a good way to wake it up too.

Packing gear in his own hangar was a damn sight more pleasant. But having only unknown kids as backup was about as reassuring as that unreliable pickup had been.

He was going to have to watch himself. By the time his leg was up to a job, Lee'd joined the Expendables, and Barney could count on his fingers the times that he'd gone out without the brit at his back since then. And never in the last 10 years. He'd forgotten what it felt like. How much energy he wasted twitching at the things he couldn't see.

It made putting up with the kids' posturing easy, in comparison.

Now if they just turned out to be as good as they made out to be, maybe tomorrow would go better than he expected.

The second he saw the shadow waiting besides his truck that night, he knew the plan had, unsurprisingly, changed.

"I told you we needed him alive."

Barney's brows flew up in surprise at the growl, "And I heard you the first time. What do you want, Drummer?"

There was a beat of silence, and Barney could see a frown grow on the man's face. "Stonebanks was shot entering his hotel in Warsaw last night. No one seems to know who did it," Drummer stared at him as though trying to see a lie through Barney's shock, "I thought you'd sent one of your guys..."

"No. We were heading out tomorrow. You have no idea who did it?"

Drummer shook his head, seeming to reluctantly relax, "No. The word we got from a corpsman was a single .308 winchester into the top of the head. Died instantly. There are a couple buildings with tricky sights on that entrance, but Stonebanks' men swarmed their roofs and apparently didn't find anything."

Though on a good day he could still make the shot, he couldn't see Gunner managing the escape, anymore. Not without planning help. Then an unpleasant memory flickered through him and Barney tried to look uninterested when he asked, "Or a 7.62mmx51 NATO?"

Drummer's narrowed eyes probably meant he hadn't been as stoic as he'd hoped. "Could be. Your old team?"

Barney shook his head, "Not likely. They wouldn't agree on what to do." It was only half-true, but the man didn't need to know that. "Got guys to change plans on," he held out a hand, "Much as I wish I'd been the one to kill the bastard, I'll settle for being glad he's dead."

The CIA agent shrugged before shaking his hand, "I already said it wasn't my idea to keep him alive, Ross. As long as you didn't go behind my back, I guess we're even."

Barney clenched his teeth to swallow the response to that, settling instead on watching the man walk away.

And getting Thorn to get his ass back to the hangar.

\----

"You can get surveillance of the buildings around it, right?"

Thorn was understandably confused at the sudden turnaround; and the lack of his comrades. "Yeah, I should be able to find a feed over Warsaw from yesterday. But what am I looking for? If they couldn't find anything-"

Barney handed him a page, "They didn't know what they were looking for." He glanced once at the picture of Lee, snuck after some long job; tired and grim and looking away from the camera, appropriate pouring rain running down the cabin's curved glass behind him. Everything in shades of grim grey.

Barney locked eyes with the kid, shoving the disheartening memory back down, "He's ex-SAS. Sniping isn't his first love, but he's damn good at it. I watched him pull shots with an old L96A1 that made *me* jealous as hell, and he knows how to get around without being noticed; natural chameleon. They don't know what to look for. You do. Watch the roofs before. Get the surrounding camera feeds after. Look for a shadow. Look for where your eyes try to slide away."

"Could take a while."

Barney grimaced at the glum kid, "Just find him."

It *might* be a waste of time. Might. Was possible Lee was ignoring his calls out of perfectly reasonable annoyance. Or because he was too drunk to answer. Neither of which stopped the acid bubbling in his gut.

Stonebanks was sure to have had more enemies than God and the President put together; and most of them were almost certainly killers. It didn't have to be Lee.

\----

He found the rest of them at the hospital. Lee conspicuous by his absence. 

Looking each of them in the eye, he asked as quiet and neutral as he could when all he wanted to do was snarl and rant, "Where is he?"

Toll shook his head, knowing him too well to bother asking who he meant. "Haven't seen him since he took off after you, Barney. I've tried getting in touch with him, but he hasn't answered my calls."

So. Not just ignoring Barney, then. Could still be on a drunk in Key West.

Gunner just shook his head, grim-faced.

But Doc.. Barney stared at him, hard, until the old Expendable waved him off. "Yeah yeah, enough, Barney. He came to see me that night. Shared some beers," he shrugged, "And asked a bunch of questions about Stonebanks."

Barney's eyes dropped shut. Shit.

"Barney?"

He looked up and met Toll's worried look, feeling a sliver of ice lodging itself in his chest, "Someone shot Stonebanks in front of a Warsaw hotel with a long-range riffle last night."

"Christmas?"

Barney forced a shrug, meeting Doc's eyes, "It's just a guess."

\----

When the kid shouted his name across the hangar a couple hours later, he knew damn well it was no guess. 

His laptop had a frozen image of a modern glass skyscraper in night-darkness, but with the glow of a small city around it. 

"Found the sniper, at least," he saw Thorn give him a short glance as Barney's eyes searched for a familiar shape, "You'll have to tell me if it's him. Hard to recognize."

The video started playing, focused on the rooftop. At first all he saw was the darkness of shadows. Then a burst of movement separated itself. 

"One shot. He didn't wait to see if Stonebanks was dead, just shot and then started packing up."

Barney's lips twitched, "He wouldn't need to see. He'd know when he took the shot. And even if something went wrong and he missed, he couldn't afford to take a second shot. Christmas follows plans." And nagged those he cared about so they followed them too.

Thorn nodded, "Yeah, I can see that." He pointed to where the figure was frozen where he'd stopped the feed, "This is the opposite side from the International; unlikely any of Stonebanks' bodyguards would make it around to spot him. He ties a rope of some sort and jumps off." 

Barney tried to keep thoughts of where the *fuck* Lee WAS from running away with him as Thorn tapped away at his keyboard.

A different view of dark glass appeared, "I found a feed facing that side." They watched a shadow drop from the roof, and then stop a dozen floors down. "Looks like he either found a window that actually opens, or he cut the glass beforehand and had it somehow holding temporarily." The darkness of the glass seemed to swallow the figure, followed by a slither of movement from the roof. "Released the rope. When the goons get to the roof in about 5 minutes, they just run around like headless chickens; they never even slow near his tie-off."

"Doesn't mean they don't find him later."

"That's where this gets iffy. That room he goes in has no feed. Nor the corridors near. And I couldn't spot him in any of the feeds that do exist. Until.." A hotel foyer in daytime appeared. 

Familiar legs, gait and shoulders strolling toward the doors like a tourist without a plan. Barney didn't wait for a shot of his face. "That's him." At the last second before he passed beyond the camera's reach, Lee's face turned as he caught the door for a tourist juggling a baby, a toddler and a clunky camera. Square glasses, a thin cap of white hair and not a hint of shadow on his jaw. 

"He's good."

Barney nodded silently, eyed glued on the distance-fuzzed ones on the screen, through their even more distancing lenses; bubble of frustration at not being able to simply draw Lee out of that screen and into his arms. He could be anywhere on the planet by now. With murderous goons and the bloody Agency after him. And Barney could do SHIT to keep him safe!

"Since I have him, I'll track him as long as I can," Barney reluctantly met the kid's sympathetic look, "Once he leaves the city limits I'll be blind unless there's a sat I can hop a ride on, but I'll put together a recognition algorithm to net a perimeter until he passes through something that I can find him on. It'll take processing time, but the real problem is how good he is at changing and blending. He doesn't exactly stick out."

Barney smirked bleakly to himself for a second: Lee stuck out. For *him* he did. The very skills that were making Thorn's job harder drew Barney. The sharp edges when he whipped through bad guys like a deadly shadow. 

"Just find him." Tell me no one's gotten him because I fucked up.

\----

It took the kid 36 hours to find him crossing a checkpoint in the Carpathian mountains into Romania. 

"I think I've got him at a handful of airports, now. You need to confirm that these catches are him. None come with any of the aliases you gave me coming up for passengers." 

Barney'd feel guiltier for the black shadows under the kid's eyes if his own didn't feel like he'd just walked out of a sandstorm after spending the hours staring at his own screen, kicking his memory into spiting out everything he remembered Lee saying about his past. "It wasn't likely he'd reuse any of them." He watched the stills tile out on the screen, "Not the two in the corner." He had to lean in to check one with a long coat hiding the body's shape, "Yeah. Yeah: know those hands." He straightened, "The rest are him. Good job."

Thorn grunted acknowledgement. "That means I don't have him past Mandalay. There isn't much in Burma to track with, and I guess I haven't caught him at the borders, yet."

Burma. "You won't." Land of a thousand temples full of monks with shaved heads that practised martial arts in open courtyards. All he had to do was keep his eyes down and his pale body covered and satellites were useless. "You did good, kid. Go home."

Only Barney's ageing memory was going to be of any use, now. 

\----

He'd forgotten how it felt to stand on these grounds; or convinced himself it hadn't been real, anyway. The crazy pulling silence that reached right into his head. The unnatural peace that slowed his heart. No matter how much turmoil had ridden with him to this point.

"Welcome back."

Lee turned and met the age-paled eyes watching him with peaceful knowing. The old bow still came natural, even with the decade and a half since he'd last used it. "Thank you."

The old master watched him quietly and Lee automatically rested with the silence. There was no hurry here. You let a person think and took the time to think your own thoughts. 

"You bring grief. Not the old anger and pain."

He'd almost forgotten the state he'd been in when he stumbled across this place, the first time. And across this same old man, who'd already been old *then*. "No. Not the old anger." And not new anger. Not really. Old man was right about that too. Part of him had understood why Barney'd done what he had, after a few hours to get over the stupid shock that he should have known better than to fall into. Hurt not to have his skills be trusted. Hurt bad that Barney'd rather die without him than fight together. But he understood.

"Come."

Lee quietly followed the orange-wrapped man beyond the gate, letting the atmosphere remind him how to breathe right. The future had to wait; worrying about it wouldn't help anything.

\----

_You're struttin' into town like you're slingin' a gun._

The relief that rushed through Barney when he stepped around a last tree and saw the familiar back sticking out of the water in front of the waterfall the old man had sent him to almost made him stumble. He threw a hand out to catch himself on the damn tree and just stood staring blindly, waiting for his strength to come back. Safe. He was safe. Not taken at the last minute. Not wounded and dying. 

He'd been too locked on finding Lee for the last too damn many hours to notice much of anything. Now the steaming day's bright sun and clichéd chirping birds and fresh falling water were a shock to his system. 

And if a sarcastic little voice at the back of his mind pointed out that the slick skin rippling as Lee soaped up and then shifted around to rinse off was damn beautiful, and attached to a guy he loved and who'd *kissed* him the last time they saw each other, well, Barney had other priorities than to figure out the most shocking thing affecting him.

When Lee looked like he was done and just relaxing in the sun, Barney took a step out from under the trees into the few feet of clearing in front of the pool the waterfall had created in the small river.

Lee had turned to him before Barney'd finished taking a step, and stared at him calmly.

"You coming home?"

Lee snorted at what was probably a rude opening line, before walking toward him, the shallow water dropping below his waist within steps of the fall. Barney jerked his eyes up to stick to Lee's when he caught sight of the shadow of a knife sheath on a muscled thigh. Wasn't that he hadn't seen Lee naked before, but.. it was different when he couldn't help but think of- And Lee was too damn observant. And had a clear line of sight. And this was NOT the plan.

"Was gonna wait a few weeks and then make sure no one was after me before I started haunting you into dropping the martyr gig."

Barney couldn't see the hint of smile relaxing Lee's water-glistening lips when he got too close for them to fit his peripheral vision, but it was there in the man's eyes. Forgiving softness that Barney didn't deserve when he knew he'd hurt Lee's feelings by trying to keep him safe. "Anyone comes after you I'll damn well kill 'em."

" *We*'ll kill 'em."

Damn. Barney grimaced at the quiet rebuff. "We."

Lee nodded, expression back in that hidden smile. Then wet hands came up and started undoing the buttons of Barney's old cargo shirt.

And his brows flew up; not that he objected, but he'd pretty much expected to have to cajole and probably even beg- "Lee?"

A smirk escaped, no doubt at the slight breathless edge to the name, "Most people wash up before they go courtin' after a long flight in hot conditions," at the raised brows and tug on admittedly sweaty material, Barney held his arms out to the sides enough that Lee could push the stiff cotton off his shoulders, more than a little startled to have someone undressing him ('Let along a naked mercenary.' 'Shut up.'), "But I'm a flexible guy; I can deal with a change of tradition. Let me introduce you to my shower."

Barney snorted a surprised chuckle, raising his arms up, this time, to have his t-shirt pulled off, "Courting??"

Lee's response was muffled by the cotton being carefully pulled up past the knife strapped to his back, "Asking me to come 'home' and then checking out my assets?" when Barney's head popped back into the bright day it was to Lee giving him his widest grin from bare inches away, inches that shrank until there was a hard chest against his, water-click as the legs pressing to Barney's chinos hard enough that he felt them getting damp, "I'd call that Barney Ross' idea of courtin', yeah."

Any response he'd had vanished when a hand slid into his pants without a by your leave and left Barney frozen and just staring at the simple joy in Lee's eyes. Only distantly aware that his zipper was getting lowered behind that 'protecting' hand. 

About the time the hand pulled away from his definitely stiff dick, Barney managed to clear his throat, "I take it you hand out on the first date?" He was pretty sure he hadn't expected anything to come of that kiss, but right now he wanted Lee safe at his side; the outright fear he'd felt not knowing where he was was stronger than his old demons and their threat to everyone near him. Even *this* near. And.. how long had Lee *wanted* this?

He grinned slowly, helplessly, as he watched Lee crack up at his question, shoulders shaking with laughter as he pushed the chinos into slithering down Barney's legs, "A, I think the 15 years we've had together should count as at least a dozen 'dates'. B," the smile turned into a leer as fingers caught the sides of Barney's underwear, "You can have hands, along with whatever other body parts you want," that was too much of an invitation to resist, and Barney got both of his palms sliding on hard pecs as Lee pushed teasingly slow at his waistband, "I'll sure as fuck be pawing every inch of *you*."

**Author's Note:**

> \- L96A1: oh the weird things we end up researching...  
> \- That first disguise was totally inspired by Parker  
> \- and of course the sniper is from FF7


End file.
